Red Bull Ring DTM: BMW's Marco Wittmann wins bizarre race

Marco Wittmann won a bizarre sixth race of the DTM season at the Red Bull Ring in Austria.

The current points leader wound up having little opposition on his way to victory, his BMW team-mates Timo Glock and Augusto Farfus - who flew the Bavarian flag at the front for the majority of the race - gave Wittmann an easy passage to the front as Mercedes' and Audi's best challengers fell out of contention.

Wittmann, who only took over the lead on lap 32 of 47, then had a three-BMW deep train consisting of Farfus, Glock and Martin Tomzcyk to play rear-gunner behind him, helping him to a comfortable third win of the season.

For BMW to get into a position where it could control the race, it took two strange drive-through penalties.

The first came for Audi's Jamie Green, who jumped into a surprise lead on the 24th lap when he stayed out on the option tyre a lap longer than the rest of the leaders.

However, it was soon revealed that the extra lap took him over the half the race distance on the softer tyres, meaning he was forced to serve a drive-through penalty, taking him out of contention and leaving him eighth at the finish.

Then, Mercedes' best chance at a result was also given a penalty, thanks to an unsafe release of Robert Wickens during the stops.

Despite being told he would have to tour through the pitlane, Wickens proceeded to charge into the lead past Farfus and stayed out for a whole six laps before eventually pulling into the pits and immediately retiring the car - leaving the four BMWs clear at the front.

Behind the leading BMWs, Timo Scheider turned 15th on the grid into fifth thanks to clever use of the option-to-standard strategy, while Adrien Tambay came from even further back from 20th to finish sixth.

Mattias Ekstrom finished seventh and best of the runners to start on the standard and switch to the option, having been let past Green on the final lap.

Christian Vietoris, meanwhile, was the best of the Mercedes in ninth, having spent the majority of the race leading the charge of those on the softer tyres in the second stint.

But he lost out to Ekstrom after running wide trying to pass Green at Turn 2 a couple of laps from the end of the race.

Pos Driver                  Team/Car        Time/Gap    
 1. Marco Wittmann          RMG BMW         1h08m23.185s
 2. Augusto Farfus          RBM BMW         +3.298s     
 3. Timo Glock              MTEK BMW        +5.391s     
 4. Martin Tomczyk          Schnitzer BMW   +6.237s     
 5. Timo Scheider           Phoenix Audi    +6.666s     
 6. Adrien Tambay           Abt Audi        +12.213s    
 7. Mattias Ekstrom         Abt Audi        +14.046s    
 8. Jamie Green             Rosberg Audi    +14.456s    
 9. Christian Vietoris      HWA Mercedes    +15.224s    
10. Bruno Spengler          Schnitzer BMW   +15.782s    
11. Miguel Molina           Abt Audi        +16.192s    
12. Joey Hand               RBM BMW         +16.214s    
13. Mike Rockenfeller       Phoenix Audi    +17.717s    
14. Maxime Martin           RMG BMW         +30.235s    
15. Daniel Juncadella       Mucke Mercedes  +34.836s    
16. Edoardo Mortara         Abt Audi        +35.420s    
17. Gary Paffett            HWA Mercedes    +40.852s    
18. Paul di Resta           HWA Mercedes    +44.107s    
19. Nico Muller             Rosberg Audi    +45.827s    
20. Vitaly Petrov           Mucke Mercedes  +45.971s    
                                                        
Retirements:                                            
                                                        
    Robert Wickens          HWA Mercedes    34 laps     
    Pascal Wehrlein         HWA Mercedes    26 laps     
    Antonio Felix da Costa  MTEK BMW        10 laps